Pacific Rim - Dark Horizons - Congratulations
by Darkpenn
Summary: A happy event, and a new danger.


**Pacific Rim: Dark Horizons – Congratulations**

_A happy event, and a new danger._

_[Author's Note: This story follows the story Dark Horizons - Early Warning Signs.]_

"Perfect," said the doctor, as she ran the ultrasound wand over Dee's abdomen. "Early days yet, of course. I'm a bit surprised you even knew."

"Puking," said Dee.

"Uh-huh," said the doctor, looking at the chart and the results of the blood test. "I must say that you are in exceptionally good shape, for a housewife, Mrs Gottlieb."

Newton, watching from the other side of the room, glanced at this wife, an eyebrow raised at the idea of Dee using that name. Elle shot him her 'don't say a word' look.

"I, er, do a lot of Zumba," said Dee. "Which is how I twisted my ankle."

"Zumba?" said Hermann. "Oh, yes, I mean, Zumba."

Dee pulled down her blouse and pulled up her jeans – she was, unusually, not wearing her Ranger uniform – and swung herself off the table. Elle, also wearing civilian clothes, handed her friend the jacket she had been holding.

The doctor looked at her, up and down. "I suppose you do Zumba too," she said.

"Yes, a lot of Zumba," she said.

The doctor looked at Hermann and Newton.

"We, er, don't," said Newton.

"Huh," said the doctor, looking at the two men and then at the two women. She shook her head a little. She gave Dee some early-pregnancy literature, and she was still wondering about the odd quartet when they left.

The four of them left the office and walked along the street, eventually finding a coffee shop and taking a table.

"It's good news that everything is okay," said Newton to Dee, "but I'm not sure why you didn't see a Ranger doctor."

"That would mean paperwork I don't want to deal with," said Dee. "I don't think there is a policy on pregnant Rangers, but Hansen would have me on administrative leave in five seconds. I'm not sure I want that. And thanks, Elle, for leaving some things out of the report about the incident in Yosemite."

"I think we need a bit more of a handle on things before we bring the Marshall into the loop," she said. "But of course he'll have to know eventually. Until then, we'll keep it quiet, and you can be Mrs Gottlieb."

"Yes, but we really should talk about what happened at the Yosemite Breach," said Newton. "Those creatures, well, it can't have been just a coincidence that you didn't attack you. I don't mean to pry into your private lives, but when you ... did it ... in the Anteverse, was anything ... well, different?"

Dee considered. "It was ... great," she said. "Of course, sex with Hermann here is always pretty good, but that time was, how can I put it, an eleven. At the time, I thought it was just because we thought we were going to die at any moment. Now I am not so sure."

Newton looked at Hermann. Hermann shrugged. "One does what one can," he said. "But in that instance we cannot avoid the possibility that the Anteverse had an influence."

"Hey, I'm not saying that I want to go back for another roll," said Dee.

"Nor I," said Hermann. "Nut we cannot ignore the possibility of our baby – our child – being in some way affected by the circumstances of its conception."

"But the doctor said that it looked perfect," said Elle. "So it's not going to be half-Kaiju or anything."

"Perfect," mused Hermann. "A word that has caused me a range of concerns lately."

Newton gave a little laugh. "Don't you think it's the wrong time to have such worried faces?" he said. "You guys are going to have a baby, you know. We should be celebrating."

Hermann started a little. "You know, I hadn't really looked at it that way," he said. He took his wife's hand. "Dee, we're going to have a baby," he said.

She laughed. "Yeah, I know, I'm the one who's been throwing up," she said.

"So ... congratulations," said Elle.

Hermann looked at his wife.

"Wow," he said.

* * *

At that moment, in Hong Kong, in a secret room of the Sisters of the Kaiju Church, Hyram Forsythe was examining a Drift recording. An odd technology, he thought. Essentially the recording of a dream, replayed on a sort of television, specifically adapted for the purpose. It had been tried before, but usually the results were so confused that it was impossible to find any meaning. The most that was usually recorded were some random images, and hours of static. There had been recordings of people on drugs, and those had been even more chaotic.

But not in this case. Not in the case of Teju, a Japanese street-kid teenager that the Church had swept up from the back streets of Shanghai in one of its recruitment drives a year ago. Like all new adherents, he had been served a dose of Headchanger, the hallucinogenic drug derived from the fluids of a Kaiju's tertiary pyramidial cortex. Like the others, Teju had been given the cloned form, but his reaction had been so remarkable that Hyram had decided to try him on some of the real stuff, precious as it was, and to record the results.

And now Hyram was watching the images on the screen. They were surprisingly clear and cogent, if totally alien and out of time-order. But Hyram knew exactly what he was seeing.

Somehow, with the drug from a Kaiju, Teju was a window into the Anteverse.

Although there were dislocated images of people who obviously did not belong there. Hyram recognised them: the maths expert and a Ranger woman who had played a big role in the murder of the Kaiju Angler. The maths expert already had a price on his head, and the woman should have. He made a note to add her to the bounty list.

He remembered reading a report from one of his spies in the unit that liaised between the UN and Ranger Command that they were married. And they had been at the reactor in Japan, when he had tried to open a path to the Anteverse, the gateway that would bring this world to the end it so richly deserved. He had last seen them being pulled towards the portal.

There was a fleeting image of the two of them, naked and entangled, apparently on the floor of that vehicle of the Chau criminal.

Hyram started. Could it mean ... ?

If there was even the possibility, it could have huge ramifications. A human child, conceived in the sacred environment of the Anteverse, could be a messiah. _The_ messiah.

He turned to his computer and called up the records, from the Church's secret database, of the mathematician and the Ranger. He found their images, and a note that they were often connected to another two enemies of the Church, a physicist (on the list as a perennial troublemaker) and another Ranger woman (who looke dangerous even in her official photograph). He put the four images together into a file and emailed to it a series of Church operatives, all over the world.

And he provided a simple instruction.

FIND THESE PEOPLE.

END


End file.
